About this sheet
A set of three original antique German botanical chromolithographs. They are three original sheets sold together, and the set is never split. The three plates are Tafel 78, the daisy family; Tafel 79, the daisy family, the thistles and the chicories; Tafel 80, the daisy, valerian and teasel families, closing with the mistletoe. They were printed in color in Stuttgart about 1890.
All three plates come from a German botanical atlas published in Stuttgart about 1890, a folio work in which each numbered plate gathers a whole plant family and prints the Latin name of every figure with its German name beneath. Each sheet is numbered as a Tafel at the upper right and carries a caption band in which every figure is numbered and named in Latin with the German name beneath. No artist, engraver, printer or publisher line is printed on any of them, which is normal for plates taken from a bound atlas of this kind. The printing is lithographic throughout, a fine black key line with crayon hatching and flat color laid from separate stones, with no halftone screen anywhere.
Sold as a set these sheets do something a single plate cannot: they run consecutively through the same part of the plant kingdom, so the grouping on the wall is the same grouping the botanist made. They are the same size, the same orientation and the same palette, so one frame specification covers all of them. German botanical atlas plates of this period are among the most collected of natural history prints, and a run of three in matching frames above a sideboard, along a hallway or over a dining table is one of the most reliable arrangements there is.
Even age toning throughout. Handling soiling along the edges of all three sheets. Light foxing in the margins of all three sheets. Slight wear at the corners of two of the three sheets.
These are original antique plates, not modern reproductions. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
